The glue has just become superglue.

As I have written before, I am more and more convinced that the glue that is holding together all of the small pieces of online learning has to be as flexible and universal as Moodle. While I wasn’t convinced that it had to be Moodle vs. something else, I am becoming more and more convinced that this is the right direction for the many connected and authentic learning experiences I expect to have in the future.

Today’s reason is that Moodle has an incredibly easy to impliment solution for synchronous events. As many schools and districts are looking around for synchronous tools to buy like Elluminate, Adobe Connect, iLink, and others, the unassuming little open source solution called DimDim quietly integrated with an LMS so seamlessly that you do not even have to set up accounts.

I was able to get this solution to work in literally ten minutes (and most of that time was just transfering the DimDim files over to the moodle folders). If you are interested in experimenting with having live sessions within your own moodle classrooms and 20 seats is enough for your purposes, this is a free and easy way of doing it:

Step 3: Set up your own meeting in a classroom or on the front page of your moodle, by simply inserting a new activity and then putting in the configuration of the meeting you would like to have. (As you can see below, you have a lot of options to turn on or off.)

Once everything is set up, you get a link to your webmeeting that looks like this:

I can’t even believe how easy it was to provide a synchronous tool to anyone who wants it, all without having to create accounts or adjust permissions.

While, this isn’t the killer app that does it all and it doesn’t make large class sizes any easier, the simple ability for any teacher at any time to set up their own learning events that can be recorded for later use is just one more reason why we need to be gluing everything that we can to Moodle and making the community better in the process.

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Author: Ben and Kara Wilkoff

He is married to his favorite person, and loves his three children quite a little bit (aged 5, 10 and 12). He is passionate about authentic learning, technology with purpose, and creating at least one new thing every day. In short, he teaches, and learns. A lot.
Also, he co-founded WouldYouLikeABanana.com with his wife, Kara.

You may be interested in checking out Mikogo for free online meetings and Web presentations. It’s a free app and very easy & secure to use. Many great features and we just released the version for Mac computers. You can share any screen content live over the Web with your participants.
Also Mikogo includes a remote keyboard/mouse control feature, so you can use the app not only for meetings but also remote support.
Drop by the website to check it out http://www.mikogo.com and feel free to contact me if you would like more details.